Latest California Healthline Stories
Three new maternity coverage laws were passed this year in California, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the people who need that coverage will get it, according to experts who gathered at a recent meeting in the Capitol Building.
“Just passing a new law we found isn’t enough,” according to Jenya Cassidy of the California Work and Family Coalition, which co-sponsored the event. “It’s also really important that you need to empower people to use the rights they have.”
According to Cassidy, many women of reproductive age who qualify for services and protections under California law aren’t aware of them.
How Can California Make Most of Volatile Marketplace?
We asked experts and policymakers how the state can best take advantage of competition and consolidation in the health care industry to ensure that the entire system — and ultimately California consumers — benefit.
PCIP Enrollment Could Be Capped in Two Months
State officials may need to curtail enrollment in the federally funded Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan in as little as two months from now, if more federal dollars aren’t allocated to it.
That was the word last week from the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which oversees the federal PCIP program. It was surprising news, given its history since the program launched last year.
Every month, at every board meeting, the report was always the same — that the flow of enrollees into the program was increasing, but at a surprisingly slow rate.
Premium Hikes Report May Be Kindling for California Initiative
Premiums for employer-based health insurance increased by 50% nationally in the seven years before passage of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund. The report comes at the start of a statewide campaign for a ballot measure to give California authority over health insurance rate hikes.
Healthy San Francisco’s Lessons for National Health Reform
It has an employer mandate. It has improved access to care. It has survived a Supreme Court challenge. So, why aren’t national health policy leaders paying more attention to Healthy San Francisco?
Health Insurance Rate Regulation May Be On November Ballot
The contentious issue of regulating California’s health care insurance industry is back.
After AB 52 by Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) was shelved at the end of the last legislative session, that looked like the final word on the prospect of regulating health insurance rates.
Yesterday, Consumer Watchdog filed paperwork to take health insurance rate regulation to the voters.
Five Key Lines in the Circuit Court Rulings on Reform
Questions about the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality took center stage again this week, as a fourth appeals court rendered its decision and the Supreme Court prepares to conference on whether to take the case.
New Cost Tool Aims To Boost Pay-for-Performance Model of Care
In an effort to measure value in health care transactions, the Integrated Healthcare Association is introducing a “Total Cost of Care” metric to be used in its pay-for-performance program. IHA hopes the new tool will speed up improvements in clinical quality by providing financial incentives to physicians.
Follow the Money: How Industry Is Lobbying To Preserve Reform Law
New reports on health sector lobbying reveal that the industry continues to donate generously to President Obama and Democrats, despite public criticism of last year’s health reform law.
Extra Year of Operation for PCIP?
A big topic at yesterday’s meeting of the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB) was the agency’s interaction with the state’s Health Benefit Exchange.
Programs MRMIB administers will eventually disappear, absorbed by the introduction of health care reform and the Exchange in 2014. That is fine with the board members at MRMIB, but they gently raised the idea yesterday that programs such as the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan might be continued for a year.
“This population will migrate to the Exchange, and that’s what we want,” board member Richard Figueroa said. “But also, we do have some things to offer, in terms of what we’ve learned about running a transparent process, the single rules engine, and how to get people into these programs and keep them there.”